Our Wars Are Killing Us

Back in 2007, when Gen. David Petraeus was the surge commander of U.S. forces
in Iraq, he had a penchant for clock
imagery. In an interview in April of that year, he typically
said: “I’m conscious of a couple of things. One is that the Washington
clock is moving more rapidly than the Baghdad clock, so we’re obviously trying
to speed up the Baghdad clock a bit and to produce some progress on the ground
that can perhaps give hope to those in the coalition countries, in Washington,
and perhaps put a little more time on the Washington clock.” And he wasn’t
alone. Military spokespeople and others in the Bush administration right
up to the president regularly seemed to hear one, two, or sometimes as
many as three
clocks ticking away ominously and out of sync.

Hearing some discordant ticking myself of late, I decided to retrieve Petraeus’
image from the dustbin of history. So imagine three ticking clocks, all right
here in the U.S., one set to Washington time, a second to American time, and
the third to Pentagon time.

In Washington – with even the New York Times now agreeing that a
“majority” of 100 is 60 (not 51) and that the Senate’s 41st vote settles
everything – the clock seems to be ticking erratically, if at all. On the other
hand, that American clock, if we’re to believe the good citizens of Massachusetts,
is ticking away like a bomb. Americans are impatient, angry,
and “in
revolt” against Washington time. That’s what the media continue to tell
us in the wake of last week’s Senate upset.

Depending on which account you read, they were outraged
by a nearly trillion dollar health-care reform that was also a giveaway
to insurance companies, and annoyed
by Democratic candidate Martha Coakley calling Curt Schilling a “Yankees fan”
as well as besmirching
handshaking in the cold outside Fenway Park; they were anxious
about an official Massachusetts unemployment rate of 9.4
percent (and a higher real one), an economy that has rebounded for bankers
but not for regular people, soaring deficits, staggering foreclosure rates,
mega-banking bonuses, the Obama administration’s bailout of those same bankers,
and its coziness
with Wall
Street. They were angry and impatient about a lot of things, blind angry
you might say, since they were ready to vote back into office the party not
in office, even if behind that party’s “new face” were ideas that would take
us back to the origins of the present disaster.

A Blank Check for the Pentagon

It’s worth noting, however, that they’re not angry about everything – and
that the Washington clock, barely moving on a wide range of issues, is still
ticking away when it comes to one institution. The good citizens of Massachusetts
may be against free rides and bailouts for many types, but not for everybody.
I’m speaking, of course, about the Pentagon, for which Congress has just passed
a record new budget of $708
billion (with an Afghan war-fighting supplemental request of $33 billion,
essentially a bailout payment, still pending but sure to pass). This happened
without real debate, much public notice, or even a touch of anger in Washington
or Massachusetts. And keep in mind that the Pentagon’s real budget is undoubtedly
close to a trillion dollars, without even including the full panoply of our
national security state.

The tea-party crews don’t rail against Pentagon giveaways, nor do Massachusetts
voters grumble about them. Unfettered Pentagon budgets pass in the tick-tock
of a Washington clock and no one seems fazed when the Wall Street Journalreveals
that military aides accompanying globe-hopping parties of congressional representatives
regularly spend thousands of taxpayer dollars on snacks, drinks, and other
“amenities” for them, even while, like some K Street lobbying outfit, promoting
their newest weaponry. Think of it, in financial terms, as Pentagon peanuts
shelled out for actual peanuts, and no one gives a damn.

It’s hardly considered news – and certainly nothing to get angry about –
when the secretary of defense meets privately with the nation’s top military-industrial
contractors, calls for an even “closer partnership,” and pledges
to further their mutual interests by working “with the White House to secure
steady growth in the Pentagon’s budgets over time.” Nor does it cause a stir
among the denizens of inside-the-Beltway Washington or the citizens of Massachusetts
when the top ten defense contractors spend
more than $27 million lobbying the federal government, as in the last quarter
of 2009 (a significant increase over the previous quarter), just as plans for
the president’s Afghan War surge were being prepared.

Nor is it just the angry citizens of Massachusetts, or those tea-party organizers,
or Republicans stalwarts who hear no clock ticking when it comes to “national
security” expenditures, who see no link between our military-industrial outlays,
our perpetual wars, and our economic woes. When, for instance, was the last
time you saw a bona fide liberal economist/columnist like Paul Krugman
include the Pentagon and our wars in the litany of things potentially bringing
this country down?

Yes, striking percentages of Americans attend the church (temple, mosque)
of their choice, but when it comes to American politics and the economy, the
U.S. military is our church, “national security” our Bible, and nothing done
in the name of either can be wrong.

Which brings us to Pentagon time. Yes, that third clock is ticking, but at
a very different tempo from those in Washington or Massachusetts.

Americans are evidently increasingly impatient for “change” of whatever sort,
whether you can believe in it or not. The Pentagon, on the other hand, is patient.
It’s opted for making counterinsurgency the central strategy of its war in
Central and South Asia, the sort of strategy that, even if successful, experts
claim could easily take a decade or two to pull off. But no problem – not when
the Pentagon’s clock is ticking on something like eternal time.

And here’s the thing: because the media are no less likely to give the Pentagon
a blank check than the citizens of Massachusetts, it’s hard indeed to grasp
the extent to which that institution, and the military services it represents,
are planning and living by their own clock. Though major papers have Pentagon
“beats,” they generally tell us remarkably little, except inadvertently and
in passing, about Pentagon
time.

So, for the next few minutes, just keep that Pentagon clock ticking away in
your head. In the meantime, we’ll go looking for some hints about the Pentagon’s
war-fighting time horizons buried in news reports on, and Pentagon contracts
for, the Afghan War.

Take, as a start, a Jan. 6 story from the inside pages of my hometown
paper. New York Times reporter Eric Schmitt began
it this way: “The military’s effort to build a seasoned corps of expert
officers for the Afghan war, one of the highest priorities of top commanders,
is off to a slow start, with too few volunteers and a high-level warning to
the armed services to steer better candidates into the program, according to
some senior officers and participants.” At stake was an initiative “championed”
by Afghan War commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal to create a “912-member corps
of mostly officers and enlisted service members who will work on Afghanistan
and Pakistan issues for up to five years.”

The news was that the program, in its infancy, was already faltering because
it didn’t conform to one of the normal career paths followed in the U.S. military.
But what caught my eye was that phrase “up to five years.” Imagine what it
means for the war commander, backed by key figures in the Pentagon, to plan
to put more than 900 soldiers, including top officers, on a career path that
would leave them totally wedded, for five years, to war in the Af-Pak theater
of operations. (After all, if that war were to end, the State Department might
well take charge.) In other words, McChrystal was creating a potentially powerful
interest group within the military whose careers would be wedded to an ongoing
war with a timeline that extended into 2015 – and who would have something
to lose if it ended too quickly. What does it matter then that President Obama
was proclaiming his desire to begin drawing down the war in
July 2011?

Or consider the plan being proposed, according
to Ann Scott Tyson, in a Jan. 17 Washington Post piece, by Special
Forces Maj. Jim Gant, and now getting a most respectful hearing inside the
military. Gant wants to establish small Special Forces teams that would “go
native,” move into Afghan villages and partner up with local tribal leaders
– “one tribe at a time,” as an influential paper he wrote on the subject was
entitled. “The U.S. military,” reported Tyson, “would have to grant the teams
the leeway to grow beards and wear local garb, and enough autonomy in the chain
of command to make rapid decisions. Most important, to build relationships,
the military would have to commit one or two teams to working with the same
tribe for three to five years, Gant said.” She added that Gant has
“won praise at the highest levels [of the U.S. military] for his effort to
radically deepen the U.S. military’s involvement with Afghan tribes – and is
being sent back to Afghanistan to do just that.” Again, another “up to five
year” commitment in Afghanistan and a career path to go with it on a clock
that, in Gant’s case, has yet to start ticking.

Or just to run through a few more examples:

In August 2009, the superb Walter Pincus of the Washington Postquoted
Air Force Brig. Gen. Walter Givhan, in charge of training the Afghan National
Army Air Corps, this way: “Our goal is by 2016 to have an [Afghan]
air corps that will be capable of doing those operations and the things that
it needs to do to meet the security requirements of this country.” Of course,
that six-year timeline includes the American advisors training that air force.
(And note that Givhan’s 2016 date may actually represent slippage. In January
2008, when Air Force Brig. Gen. Jay H. Lindell, who was then commander of
the Combined Air Power Transition Force, discussed
the subject, he spoke of an “eight-year campaign plan” through 2015 to build
up the Afghan Air Corps.)

In a Jan. 13 piece on Pentagon budgeting plans, Anne Gearan
and Anne Flaherty of the Associated Press reported:
“The Pentagon projects that war funding would drop sharply in 2012, to $50
billion” from the present at least $159 billion (mainly thanks to a projected
massive draw-down of forces in Iraq), “and remain there through 2015.”
Whether the financial numbers are accurate or not, the date is striking:
again a five-year window.

Or take the “train
and equip” program aimed at bulking up the Afghan military and police,
which will be massively staffed with U.S. military advisers (and private
security contractors) and is expected to cost at least $65 billion. It’s
officially slated to run from 2010-2014, by which time the combined Afghan
security forces are projected to reach 400,000.

Or consider a couple of the long-term contracts already being handed out
for Afghan war work like the $158 million the Air Force has awarded
to Evergreen Helicopters, Inc., for “indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity
(IDIQ) contract for rotary wing aircraft, personnel, equipment, tools, material,
maintenance, and supervision necessary to perform passenger and cargo air
transportation services. Work will be performed in Afghanistan and is expected
to start April 3, 2009, to be completed by Nov. 30, 2013.” Or the
Pentagon contract awarded
to the private contractor SOS International primarily for translators, which
has an estimated completion date of September 2014.

Ending the Pentagon’s Free Ride

Of course, this just scratches the surface of long-term Afghan War planning
in the Pentagon and the military, which rolls right along, seemingly barely
related to whatever war debates may be taking place in Washington. Few in or
out of that city find these timelines strange, and indeed they are just symptomatic
of an organization already planning for “the next war” and the ones after that,
not to speak of the next generation bomber of 2018,
the integrated U.S. Army battlefield surveillance system of 2025,
and the drones of 2047.

This, in short, is Pentagon time, and it’s we who fund that clock which ticks
toward eternity. If the Pentagon gets in trouble, war-fighting or otherwise,
we bail it out without serious debate or any of the anger we saw in the Massachusetts
election. No one marches in the streets, or demands that Pentagon bailouts
end, or votes ’em (or at least their supporters) out of office.

In this way, no institution is more
deeply embedded in American life or less accountable for its acts; Pentagon
time exists enswathed in an almost religious glow of praise and veneration
– what might once have been known as “idolatry.” Until the Pentagon is forced
into our financial universe, the angry, impatient one where most Americans
now live, we’re in trouble. Until candidates begin losing because angry Americans
reject our perpetual wars, and the perpetual war-planning that goes with them,
this sort of thinking will simply continue, no matter who the “commander in
chief” is or what he thinks he’s commanding.

It’s time for Americans to stop saluting and end the Pentagon’s free ride
before America’s wars kill us.